I have changed my opinion on adults on the teen grid. I’m not against them, but I’m no longer for them.
Why? Because they aren’t doing any educating!
I don’t mind the teen grid having more adult sims than teen sims. I couldn’t care less. What I care about is that they aren’t doing any of what they’re here to do; that is, teaching.
Let us consider Global Kids. They now have three sims: Global Kids, GK Machinima Island and GK Serious Gaming. Why do they need a GAMING sim to teach?
In short, they don’t. They use it to run games. If they let other teens use those resources, I wouldn’t mind. But they don’t – it’s all no build. So them and their managers have the resources to outdo anyone confined to parcels of land on the grid.
TG Adults are going downhill, fast. They had better do something about it.
Oh, and as a side note, I can’t help but be amused by the physics group on Schome Park. Here are some helpful hints:
- The physics engine is only accurate to within ten centimetres, so objects count as touching if they’re that close. There is no mysterious force field.
- Gravity is 9.8m/s/s. For proof, try putting this in a script in a physical object, then putting it in the air.
llSetForce(<0.0,0.0,9.8*llGetMass()>,FALSE);
This will cause it to levitate. You can also test this by dropping an object and have it immediately report its velocity. - The mass of an object is proportional to its size, but nothing else. When large objects mess up experiments, they probably ran out of energy, which is an arbitrary device used to stop scripts breaking stuff.
- There is no wind or water resistence, but objects will hit terminal velocity.
- The on friction from an object varies based on its material.
- Water has no representation in the physics engine – it’s just a visual effect.
- SL will not let you have objects at the quantum level, and doesn’t simulate its effects.
- c can be argued to be infinite, as things at any distance appear to happen at the same time no matter where you observe from.
Adults, do something useful. (I am aware Schome Park does more than try and work out SL’s physics, but that project is pointless. I advise they go and read this.)
I’m sure someone’s going to start a flame war here… And if they do, you deserve it…
> The physics engine is only accurate to within ten centimetres, so objects count as touching if they’re that close. There is no mysterious force field.
And? There may as well be that force there, because it has precisely the same effect and we have no way of telling otherwise unless we can be bothered looking through the source.
> Gravity is 9.8m/s/s.
We worked that out. But science should always be checked using several tests.
> The mass of an object is proportional to its size, but nothing else.
> There is no wind or water resistence, but objects will hit terminal velocity.
> Water has no representation in the physics engine – it’s just a visual effect.
> SL will not let you have objects at the quantum level, and doesn’t simulate its effects.
> c can be argued to be infinite, as things at any distance appear to happen at the same time no matter where you observe from.
Ditto.
> The on from an object varies based on its material.
What’s the ‘on’? I’m guessing that’s just a silly tpyo…
And about the link – so? It still gives us an idea of how to do real scientific tests, which is surely the point more than actually working them out…
I will assume you have some relation to this project, given you only commented on that, and you defend the activities. (EDIT: I found your userpage, so I see why you were defensive now. As a side note, I was angry when I posted that, and I suspect I might regret it shortly. I’d like to know how you found that post though.)
“On” meant “friction.” Silly typo, indeed.
I’m aware that the point is to do the experiment, not to arrive at the answer. What amused me was the line about you being the first to work this out, because people worked this out long ago. The value of g was calculated using scripts to report the velocity of an object when dropped.
Also, I think you’ve probably noticed that SL likes screwing with physics, which I imagine makes it hard to do experiments.
Oh, and I’m used to people flaming me. :p
Well – I’ll simply say I’m not on anyone’s side. Just a couple of comments:
1) Gaming can be used as one of the most effective ways of education. I honestly don’t know what GK will do in the gaming sim, but I think that, if gaming or non-formal contexts are simply not educational, then there would be no strong fundament for any adult to be on the TG at all – and that’s not the case.
2) I don’t know about the physics. I would personally guess that most basic physics experimenting is cheaper and easier to reproduce offline in an accurate way, but I don’t really want to make a judgment of Schome park because I don’t even know what they do there. Nor do they know the basics of physics in SL.
3) I would blame adults for not really using the privileges they are given on the TG as they could, but I don’t think that’s moral when there’s an entirely utilitarian campaign going on to get teenagers in PG sims on the MG. I know that hasn’t been approved yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it were at some point. I’m definitely not all happy with adults’ work, but I’m not either with teenagers’, so feel free to call me a misanthropist if you want. o.O
4. Off-topic: I tried to install SLeek and it didn’t work so I’ll just randomly post unrequested comments in your blog o.O
Thus far they have used it to host games of Tringo and the like. Not productive. It exists soley as a bribe to get you into one of their spamming groups.
Check out the Schome Park Physics wiki page. It seems they’re already running into some of SL’s inaccuracies while using a pendulum to measure g.
As for 3), I forgot to mention the 5 (possibly more) completely abandonded sims – the AccelerateNation sims and SummerTech island, which has been taken over by teens.
I made a system for in/out-world chat… you need to log in for me to set it up for you though. :p
And that comment was more on-topic than the previous two, which were based entirely around an off-topic note in the first place.
Yea, I agree with the sims thing. Thats terrible. If its payed for as a Education sim, it should be an education sim. Thats that.
Katharine -
In terms of the Serious Gaming Sim, I would point out that it’s primary purpose, so far at least, has been directed towards our afterschool program, Playing 4 Keeps, in which teens from South Shore High School in Brooklyn learn to design video games related to global issues (see Ayiti, the game that resulted from last year’s program.)
We’ve mainly used the sim to gather examples of games in Second Life in order to teach about game design principles such as core mechanics, as well as as a place where the teens in the program can practice their Second Life skills. Hopefully in the near future we’ll figure out a sustainable way that it can serve both the students in the program as well as the larger TSL community. As always, we are open to suggestions.
Why not a closed, off estate Sim? If LL can tie you to one estate, they can do it to another, as well… That would solve all the clutter. Really, all your Global Kids stuff is for your HS students… Why not GK being open, and the other two closed, sense its obviously for your students.
“It seems they’re already running into some of SL’s inaccuracies while using a pendulum to measure g.”
Actually, we’ve already calculated g at approximately 9.8 m/s^2 by measuring the acceleration of a falling body. The pendulum is to check this result, and more importantly to develop experimental techniques. We know that the figure we’ve got from the pendulum is inaccurate. What we’re doing now is getting more results and explaining why the inaccuracies are there. SL physics is inaccurate, but probing those inaccuracies is interesting and educational. Physical objects can intersect, which is inaccurate, but what we’re trying to do is work out in what circumstances they do intersect. As for the points you made as “hints”, we have already found most of them (as you would know, if you’d have investigated the project further)
“TG Adults are going downhill, fast. They had better do something about it.”
I would like to point out that in my opinion, and in the opinion of most of the other students (as far as I can tell), the adults have been doing a very good job. The project is in its early stages, but we’ve still made a great deal of progress. It has certainly been more enjoyable and, in many respects, more useful, than conventional school.
Marko, I would like to point out that use of an invalid e-mail address is a really good way to knock down your credibility, and also, more to the point, to be caught out by Akismet. I very rarely actually check if all the spam it catches is actually spam.
As for your second comment, I was actually referring to public sims, as I lack access to private ones. You may be discovering the meaning of life for all I know. Given that we do similar experiments in real life at my school (and manage to produce g as being 8.7, which still isn’t really impressive >.>), I’d maintain that real space works better than virtual space for some things.
As for interpenetrating physical objects, SL’s physics aren’t designed for that to happen, and it’s more of a bug than anything else. Furthermore, SL physics hate interpenetrating physical objects, especially torii – they are a good way to crash sims, so I would advise caution there.
As a side note, do you happen to know what causes objects to reach a terminal velocity in the absence of any from of friction? That’s something I would like to know. >.>
Hi Katharine – Forgive me, I’m just getting familiar with the SL Teen Grid blogosphere, and came across your site. Congratulations on your highly informative blog, by-the-way, and the photos and the statistics of the teen grid, which were of great interest.
I felt prompted to post a comment here as the post is relevant to what we are doing.
Firstly, an introduction – I am an adult reponsible for helping the British Council (http://www.britishcouncil.org/) set up sims on the TG – we have three at the moment, and one is almost finished. We are hoping to open this to teens in May (it will be open to everyone).
So, what are you going to see on and we going to be doing with our sims?
We are an organisation partly dedicated to helping a global audience learn English, and this is principally what we will be doing. We are hoping to bring a lot of our exisiting students into Second Life, offering them an opportunity to interact in an exciting intercultural virtual world. So, hopefully, there will be an influx of students to the TG from many different countries.
At least at first, we won’t be using the space for teaching, but there will be lots of self-access activities for learners of English to participate in, which we hope will be both fun and educational. I think the island will be engaging enough not only for teens learning English, but also for native speaking teens too. There will also be some cool places for people just to hang out too. This was always our idea – we’d like to encourage teens from around the world to come together and share experiences, while helping those who wish to learn more and practise English in SL to do so.
The first of our sims, which the Developers Kim & the Magicians are finishing for us, will be ready soon, and the 2 others will follow. We are currently discussing the best way to progress with the third sim, believing that if we can in some way get teens involved in building content there, to create a space with us, we may be able to offer something very special.
In the first instance, I’ll be keeping people informed of progress here: http://grahambluecoat.edublogs.org/
I’d also love to hear from you, and any other teens about what you think is needed on the TG, and what you think a project such as ours could and should be doing to promote the objectives oultined above. Look forward to hearing any comments you may have to say on the subject. Thanks!
Katharine, Thank you for continuing to hold out high expectations for both Global Kids and other adults in the teen grid. And of course this is a great forum for larger discussions, but you know us and can always speak with us directly as well.
Not everything we do on our islands is open to everyone, but we still keep the islands open. Our intentions are to run grid-wide activities in both locations – please be patient with us if we can’t start them as fast as we like. We actually need to raise money for each of our projects. And of course, if teens want to help out, you know we are always open to volunteers and supporting teen leadership.
The past few months we have running more but smaller projects in TSL while we have been building up the program offline. We should be able to triple our staff by July and launch a significant array of educational programs, some of which I would expect will interest you, in the coming months, launching what some remarkable projects that I promise will be unlike anyone has ever seen, in either grid.
Now how’s that for raising the bar?
That would be raising the bar, but you haven’t done it yet, so it doesn’t count. :p
I’ll hold judgement on that one until July.
I just realised the blog’s clock’s an hour out. Gah. >.<
I just realised I committed a big mistake in my post. When I said “Nor do they know the basics of physics in SL”, I meant either “Nor do I know the basics of physics in SL”.
Well – I wish everyone success in their projects, even if I don’t agree with some of them. Even if I don’t participate much or ever say it, it makes me kind of glad to see some of these projects taking place. Personal hopes are dead for me, but It’s always good to see others doing good things.
Be well, all.
“What I care about is that they aren’t doing any of what they’re here to do; that is, teaching.”
I’m not sure I understand. Are you saying “educational sim=teaching”? Teaching in what sense? I would think a lot of teaching/learning is going on with teens on the GK Gaming sim already. At my library in rl, we usually follow a developmental asset model (http://www.search-institute.org/assets/) when creating programs and activities for teens. I think teens are learning that their online community values them by having activities they are interested in, they are probably learning a sense of safety with adults online, and they are learning responsible behavior as it is modeled to them in how they interact online. Running games sounds like a great way to teach some of these assets.
oh dear…..well, this isnt good. I do hope we have all sorted this.
on one side, Kath, these people in Schome, people from NAGTY, are some of the brightest kids i’ve known.
but, after seeing your programming capacticies, I would suggest you enroll in NPGATE (NAGTY’s succsessor).
Good point. I could care less about the Schome Park thingy, as none of that makes sense to me anyways, but you are totally right about the adult owned island things.
Hopefully you’ve heard of New Hope, well, to put it short:
-Getting a private island
-In process of getting adopted by church of 3000 (mine =D)
-Hosts events every week…and we don’t even have the luxury of having a PI yet…
I think GK is totally awesome and everything, but LL must like them a whoooole bunch. How else can a not very SL-active sim afford to own…3…sims….